of great importance for Greek schooling, and later, when peace was 

 reestablished in Greece, Capodistria duly acknowledged the import- 

 ant part played by American missionaries in the primary education 

 of Greece. 



A certain amount of importance is also to be attached to the 

 ubiquitous American traveler, who since the end of the eighteenth 

 century has visited all lands, invariably seeking the highest places, 

 meeting kings and dignitaries, and never failing to leave behind him 

 some reminder of his native home. Such influence, in the case of 

 Russia, we find in the memoirs of Poinsct, who in the beginning of the 

 nineteenth century not only cultivated Alexander I's acquaintance, 

 but also instructed him on American affairs. This tendency of 

 Americans for more than a century to penetrate distant countries 

 lias led to an American interest in foreign matters which often is 

 greater than it is at home. Thus we shall soon see that Slavic liter- 

 ature as a whole was made the subject of study in America long- 

 before it had gained recognition elsewhere, and thus we sometimes 

 get a native influence which, after having been active in America, 

 has come back to affect the native mind. 



Nor do the above-mentioned sources exhaust all the possibilities 

 of American influences upon the thought of European countries. 

 There are also the general subtle influences of the so-called American- 

 ization of Europe, that is, the introduction of social and commercial 

 methods, of sports and school ideas, of newspaper and periodical 

 methods, all of which leave behind them an effect upon literature, 

 which, however, is seldom traceable. The great historical events 

 in America have never passed unnoticed in Europe, and the effect 

 of the American propaganda for the abolition of slavery has been, 

 for example, the creation of a similar anti-slavery literature in 

 Russia, the very liberation of the slaves taking place contempo- 

 raneously in Russia and in the United States. Tar more powerful 

 has been the influence of the American Revolution at the end of the 

 eighteenth century; the part it played in hastening matters in France 

 has lately been discussed by a French scholar, but the still greater 

 influence upon the affairs in other countries has not yet been inves- 

 tigated. 



1 have so far indicated the sources that must be consulted in a 

 study of American influences upon the intellectual pursuits of any 

 given nation or set of nations. 1 shall now try to apply this pro- 

 cedure to the investigation of American influences upon the Slavic 

 literatures. 



The most peculiar relation of America to a Slavic country is that, 

 to Bohemia, for it is Bohemia of all tin 1 Slavic countries that has 

 exerted an important influence upon the American mind. The Hu>site 

 movement, itself a reflex of the \VyclitIite movement in Lngland, had 



